Robert Kirby : Loose cannon
The last time I risked entering a South African airport lavatory without wearing protective clothing was at Port Elizabeth and it was the business class one. Not too bad.
Before that was about seven months ago and was at Johannesburg International Airport. Remember that famous foul bogger in Trainspotting? Well, they havent got quite that bad at Joburg International, but theyre not much more than a chains length off.
If theres anything worse than the smell of old cold urine the kind thats been around since Kittyhawk days its the smell of new warm urine. Which is why I am of that select breed of males who believe that the act of micturition should be discreet. Something which takes place between you, your urethra and gravity. I simply dont like peeing up against a wall along with a set of complete strangers. This is nothing more than a mutated form of what dogs do when they piss all over the same parking meter. At least the dogs dont do it all at the same time.
I go to a booth. At Johannesburg International Airport this can be a mistake. The booth I visited had only a third of its lavatory seat, sticking up like a vast sharpened plastic dagger. Someone must have torn off the rest of this seat in panic, for use as an emergency weapon against what looked like a moving wall of pugnacious e-coli bacteria glowing along the edges of the wall and floor. They were actually hissing as they planned how to paddle across the urine-drenched floor and up my leg. I now know why so many previous solo-slashers had missed the bowl. They were hopping around trying to dodge.
A word of warning. If ever you should make the hygienic blunder of actually entering a lavatory booth in Joburg International, dont amplify your peril by getting at all close to whatever is still left of the lavatory seat. If its down, leave it down and swazz all over it and all around the edges like everyone else has done.
On no account lift up any lavatory seat you find at Joburg International because this will entail your having to touch it. And dont even think of sitting on it. If the seat is already up, dont on any account let your eyes drift to any inspection of whats taken up residence in all those yeastfields underneath it. The accumulated splashings, the desiccated smegma, expired spirochetes and all the rest of it.
But most of all, dont look down into the bowl. I did and I have to tell you that there were skid-marks in there which were so old as to have become petrified like dinosaur footprints. It would take a laser drill to get rid of those memories. At Joburg International you dont have to worry about being anally retentive; the lavatory bowls do it for you.
So, what I am saying is that the Airports Company scores full marks when it comes to being absolutely unpretentious in the running of its Joburg International lavatories. And its only fair to try to understand how profound its problem is. The administration of any public evacuation centre must be awful. What makes airport lavatories even more daunting is that theyre all being used by people who have just eaten some airline food or are about to do so. In either case, they are shitting themselves.
At the very least the Airports Company should start awarding bonus Voyager miles as a pay-back for the health risks one takes on entering one of its lavatories.
Five hundred kilometres for taking a quick leak. A 1 000 for a minimum seven-minute sit-bum. And just to make it really profitable, 5 000 Voyager kilometres if you can find a four-square length of bog-roll which hasnt been used more than twice before.